Special Warfare Division
by FreshHanana
Summary: Take a look at the young Jane Shepard in the years leading up to Mass Effect 1. How did her decisions in the past shape her into the indomitable woman we know her to be. Canon divergent, but in keeping with main plot points. (Reapers still exist) Dramatically slow build, sorry not sorry. Current rating due to strong language and violence. Tags and rating subject to change.
1. Chapter 1

Hello, beautiful people. This story is my attempt at fitting all of the same plot points together, but in a way that will, hopefully, make the story new and exciting.

I am going to try to keep the chapters around 1000 words and update when I can. If you have any private questions or comments please contact me, otherwise review away!

Notes at the end!

Chapter 1

The earliest memory I can recall was of an airshow put on by the local air guard over Veridius. The grand finale, though, is what really makes the memory stand out. The Alliance Navy had recently stationed a Special Warfare squad at Shanxi, and they came with the sleekest, fastest, and downright most deadly corvette I had ever seen, and I grew up on an Alliance base. I couldn't have been more than six years old, but watching that corvette twist and turn over the sports complex was life changing. From that moment on I wanted nothing more than to be a member of the Special Warfare Division of the Alliance Navy.

When I informed my education supervisor of my career goals she got really, well, it was the first time I had ever seen Mrs. Harvey at a loss for words. She informed me that becoming any kind of soldier would be difficult, and that I may want to talk to my parents, since they are soldiers, how best to achieve that goal.

That night, my parents informed me that, while I set myself an admirable goal, there were no women in the SWD. My world broke. My mother will tell you she was concerned she would have to call a psychiatrist. Ho-boy, was I upset. I mean I had only come to terms with being a girl, and now they were telling me that there were people out there who wouldn't let you do something just because you had a vagina.

My dad was the one to snap me out of it. "Jane, if you want this, you have make it happen." I then became the world's most determined six-year-old. I wrote letters to my elected leaders, I threw myself into my school work, and I even started tagging along on my parents' morning jog. We moved shortly after my epiphany, but the dream of joining the SWD never abated.

Four years later, the shiny new corvette that I watched fly was nothing more that twisted steel and burned plastic, my former home was a pile of boulders, and humanity learned that it was not alone in the universe. In response to the First Contact War, the Alliance Navy reorganized the SWD encourage enlistment. There were now seven distinct levels in the program called Noyan Ranks or N-Ranks. Each level came with fewer non-redacted words and fancier weapons.

At this current moment in time I, Jane Shepard, am a Lieutenant in the Alliance Navy and the youngest, female, N5 to serve. I am also questioning my decision to go down this path. Especially since it contains way too many ready-to-eat meals and a wonderful maneuver called a hot-drop.

A hot-drop is a tactical maneuver for covert operations in which a shuttle enters a planet's atmosphere at a shallow angle with no kinetic shielding, effectively making the shuttle look like one of countless meteors that pass through any given planet's atmosphere. Of course, most civilized planets have mapped such meteors and know when they will be making an appearance, rendering the maneuver moot, but on a planet whose only occupants are smugglers and terrorists it is just the thing to let you drop a squad of highly trained soldiers right on top of the enemy compound.

Which is, naturally, exactly what we are doing.

And I hate it.

We were sent to recover a stolen warhead form a group of human radicals on the planet Pragia in the Nubian Expanse. This type of mission would usually fall to the Galactic Council's goonies, the Spectres, but this little cell of terrorists decided to steal the warhead from a defense satellite orbiting a human colony inside of Alliance patrol. The Alliance brass needed to save face, so they assigned a SWD squad to the mission. My squad. Led by Commander Gregory Ser, myself as his second, Petty Officer Zachary Kim as our demolitions expert, Petty Officer Sara Hunt as our field engineer, and Lieutenant Jensen Davis as our transport specialist.

For this operation, Davis would be piloting the shuttle's drop from atmo to planet surface and I would be acting as dropmaster. The lucky bastard. As soon as we hit seventy kilometers above the planet's surface the hatch would open and I would be the one responsible for my squad's aerial performance.

The drop would take a little under three minutes and we would hit speeds over one thousand kilometers per hour. To assist with this, we were equipped with special drop-suits that out class any standard body armor. If I weren't so pissed about the risky and ill-advised hot-drop, I would be a little more excited to be trying out the state-of-the-art drop suit from Kassa Fabrications. Unfortunately, all I could think about it right now was the way it made a funny sound when I hit it against the supply crate strapped to the wall next to me.

"Holy shit, Shepard. Fucking stop." Kim exclaimed, elbowing me in the side. My armor absorbed the strike. "Is this your first hot-drop, or what?" He teased.

"Just want everybody to hate them as much as I do!" I sang back to him, glaring through my artfully tinted helmet.

"Kim, Shepard," came Ser's growl from his perch by the hatch window. "Do another weapon check please, or com check, or anything that might distract the two of you for the next two minutes." This got a chuckle from Hunt who had just completed her fifth such diagnostic scan of her weapon and armor since boarding the shuttle. Kim snorted and I shrugged my beautifully armored shoulders, but we both performed the checks like good little soldiers.

Two minutes ticked by slower than turtle going uphill, yet the alert ping still came as a surprise. We all stood up and went to stand by Ser at the hatch. Ser clapped on his helmet, toggled up his coms and staring us down.

"Alrighty, fuckwits, ready?" his voice transmitting directly to our aural implants.

"Yessir." we respond in unison.

"Davis, you there?"

"Read you loud and clear Commander." came Davis' steady voice, "You are all bright and sparkling green on my end."

"Ok, Shepard, keep us close, I don't feel like hiking this early in the morning." another round of yessirs, and I hit the hatch release opening the tail end of the small craft.

As soon as the door was fully opened, I signaled to Kim and he ran out pushing himself away from the craft, Hunt was right on his tail with Ser following quickly behind. One deep breath later, and I, too, began my speedy descent to Pragia.

Notes:

Veridius - a suburb of Shanxi, about 50km outside of the city. It is where the Alliance patrol outpost is located.

Noyan Rank - it bothered me that something could simply be called a "N," shorthand is common in military organizations, but it is SHORTHAND, there has to be a long version first. Thus "Noyan." A noyan is a Mongol nobleman who acted as a military commander under Genghis Khan. Since N-ranks operate separate from the soldier's actual rank, I thought the shoe fit.


	2. Chapter 2

The wind whistled around my body as I hurtled to the ground kilometer by kilometer. My suit's altimeter giving me a flashing readout on the Heads-Up-Display as I reunited with the rest of my squad. We were dropping in a tight formation, despite the risk of being seen, due to Pragia's unique topography that resulted from a failed Batarian terraforming experiment. This particular drop zone would be an odd one, as the only location free of Pragia's dense vegetation were its waterways. Oh, yes. This Alliance Special Warfare Division Squad was going swimming.

But, of course, that's where the special Kassa suits come in, again. Kassa Fabrication's Colossus "SAL" suit is an all-weather/all-terrain extravehicular mobility unit. Micro-thrusters in the greaves and bracers took the place of cumbersome parachutes while still allowing for an impact free descent. The armor even had built in heatsinks to store the waste heat from the thrusters and hydraulics, making it virtually invisible to most detection systems. Atmosphere to surface in three minutes, and depending on the size of the enemy's pockets, no one knows you're there. Oh, yeah, it also comes in matte black with navy blue detailing.

A dense tropical fog had settled on the area, making the water look like a warm and inviting hot spring. My VI pinged obnoxiously in my ear, alerting me to my thrusters activating, just as the altimeter alarm flashed. Slowly, I pushed my shoulders back, angling my feet towards the water, breaking formation and getting into position right as the thrusters kicked in.

My descent slowed in a painfully dramatic kind of way. It felt like my bones were trying to leave the rest of my body behind and my eyes attempted to assume a more oblong shape as I went from moving thousands of kilometers an hour to barely over two hundred.

Over the next minute or so, my bones agreed to resume normal operation and my eyes returned to their natural shape as I dropped the last fifteen kilometers. At five kilometers, the VI reestablished com-link with a slight click, and Kim quickly took advantage of it.

"Hey, Ser," Kim's voice cut in over the radio, "have you heard the one about the meteorologist that tried to catch the fog?"

"I swear to God, Kim, don't." I groaned. The thrusters on all of our suits flared in a final push just above the water before cutting out entirely.

"He mist." Kim laughed raucously as we breached the lake's surface with a large splash.

Water swelled up on all sides as the last of our momentum was expelled. Bubbles sparkled and swirled like exotic dancers as they traced over our suits. Buoyancy chambers in the suit kicked in and halted my ascent just a meter below the water's surface.

"Kim," a murky form more commonly known as Commander Gregory Ser muttered darkly into his com, "I am a big supporter of puns, but not in the field, please."

"Aye, Commander, sir."

"Good drop everyone, now on to Stage Two. We have a five-kilometer swim to the nav-point. Once we get there, Shepard and Kim will breach first. So, do a quick Amp check on the way, you two." Kim and I responded in the affirmative.

"Hunt and I will follow. Once we are clear, Shepard take point. Survey shows that the explosives are being held in an annex on the western side of the compound. We have clearance to drop anyone in our way, but we get bonus points for bringing some in alive for questioning. Once we have package confirmation, Hunt and Kim will neutralize the explosives and we hunker down and wait for Davis and exfil. We clear?"

"Aye, Sir." we reported in unison. Ser nodded sharply, and began his swim downstream. My gut clenched, tension tightening my muscles in anticipation of the upcoming fight. I pivoted and activated the nav on my HUD, bringing up the topography of the river and began my swim sticking close to the rest of my squad.

About two-kilometers into our swim my paranoia got the better of me and I toggled my VI to pull up the most recent compound scans. I want to be clear, I am not naturally paranoid. I sleep a solid eight hours after making sure the door is locked and my pistol is under my pillow. No, my paranoia comes as the result of five years of intensive training. One of which was held in a Salarian Special Tasks Group training facility. The Salarians have a saying, an enemy unknown, is an enemy to whom you have lost. I promise, in their language, it sounds much fancier. Either way, it means that before you wage war, you need to understand what you are up against or you will lose.

And we don't know what this group calls themselves. We know where their base of operations is. We know how many militants are at the base. We know their command structure, hell, we know who their commander is. But this group of supposed rebels has no name and a base on Pragia. That makes my diligently cultivated paranoia tingle.

Just as we hit the fourth kilometer, I see it. Looks like my paranoia wins again. The scans show thirty some heat signatures within human range, and only one has moved in the past hour.

"Commander, I have something I need you to look at." I stop swimming, reorienting my body to look at Ser.

"What is it Shepard?" he spins to look back at me.

"I was comparing scans of the base, and I think I may have found something of note." I pulled up the scans on my HUD and send them over to Ser, telling the VI to highlight the discrepancy. "Scans are done every twenty minutes, and only this signal has moved in any significant amount in an hour." I paused, this next bit was closer to speculation, "I believe the other signals are paralyzed, there was no fluctuation in heat temperatures, so, they have to still be alive and conscious."

"Biological agent?"

"Most likely, sir, this smells like an ambush."

"We still have a warhead to reclaim," Ser paused, considering his options. "Shepard, you will breach with Hunt. Kim, you'll be with me. We'll breach simultaneously, hopefully throw them off, then we book it to the bomb. Davis, you read?"

After a long pause, Davis' voice scratched over the coms. "Yes sir, mission change has been forwarded to ops. I am getting a green light back."

"Roger." Ser looked between our dark forms, "Move out and keep your breathers on after you breach." Ser spun back around and began swimming anew.

I kicked myself horizontal and began my own easy swim downstream. This mission just got way more interesting.


End file.
